Copy .htaccess not working

I'm having a problem with copying an .htaccess file. Here's the situation: I have Fantastico, and I'm trying to get it to copy an .htaccess file with the OS Commerce files.

Everything gets copied except the .htaccess file. I created an index.php file, and it gets copied fine. I uploaded some image files, and they get copied fine as well. It's just this .htaccess file that does not get copied. I've tried changing the permissions to 755 and increasing the size of the file, but to no avail.

Anybody have any suggestions? It's not that big of a deal, but it kind of defeats the purpose of automatic installation if I have to manually upload a file every time.

Whoa!! That was a quick response.
Okay, so what I do is untar the os commerce files, add the .htaccess then tar the files again? I'm not sure of the exact commands to do that. Could you tell me the ssh commands that need to be issued?